TDM #21

[apocalypsehowmods]

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➥ Arrival

(cw: potential for severe disorientation/vertigo, claustrophobia, arachnophobia, body horror)

It happens in the blink of an eye. You may have been asleep. You may not have. You may have stepped through a door or turned a corner. You may have seen a flicker of something at the corner of your vision and turned to look. Or maybe you didn't.

It doesn't matter. What matters is that you find yourself somewhere entirely new and entirely unfamiliar. The arrival point is not always the same. (If you're lucky, it might be a canteen or an open office. If you're not, well... you aren't claustrophobic, are you? Or arachnophobic. These ducts do seem to be a bit cobwebby.) You might even arrive in a section of building that has been demolished, leaving a pit of rubble open to the sky–hope you're up on your tetanus shots! There is no one waiting for you but you don’t seem to be alone, either. Even in a janitor’s closet or the bathroom, you’ll find at least one person who seems to be just as out of place as you are. The one exception is the demolition zone off what used to be one corner of the building: it seems the security teams are keeping a particularly close eye on that area to document new arrivals and bring them in quickly.

If characters have arrived in a location devoid of NPCs, they may want to work together to figure out what is going on... or to avoid their 'kidnappers.' If you’ve arrived in the middle of the entry foyer or the gym, there may well be a few people who startle a bit at your arrival and try to approach (or discreetly leave the room... where are they going?). Will you cooperate or fight? Do you even understand what they're saying? You might need to find a translator, if you’re not immediately willing to follow a stranger.

After characters follow their new hosts (or are forcibly taken in) there will be a limited tour and the chance to settle in at the ADI-provided housing. (Do you enjoy living with strangers? Well. It's a new situation to navigate, anyway.)

➥ 50 Steps

(cw: ghosts, hallucinations, warped reality, character death)

Rumors have been growing in recent weeks about an abandoned and overgrown cemetery just outside of Gloucester. The Alden Pond Burial Ground is a forested, 20-acre parcel that seems to have been part of the Village of Greenfield, which was a trapper's outpost around the same time as Dogtown. It was abandoned in the late 1800s after a bloody massacre, and has long since fallen to ruin. There are occasional tours around the area, particularly ghost tours in October. The rest of the year, it stands on ostensibly public lands and is open to explorers of all stripes.

Some of the most recent visitors claim to have received visions of their death from a ghostly undertaker after climbing the long stairway located in the graveyard. Some say you can tell if the vision is a real premonition by counting the number of stairs you climb and descend in the graveyard. If the number is the same going up as going down, the vision is false. If you have an extra step, 51 going down, though… then you will have seen your true death before you.

Those visiting the park will find it difficult to avoid the prominent (if poorly maintained) steps leading from a lower level to a higher level in the graveyard. It's not that there's some force compelling you toward it, but the place seems to warp and contort itself to always lead back to those steps. Should you resist too stridently, you might find yourself bludgeoned by some unseen foe and knocked to the ground. This assault seems to break the hold on those stubborn enough to avoid the stairs so that they can leave the graveyard.

For those who do walk the steps… it's a quiet affair as the world seems to hush with each step further until it's absolute silence at the top. For just a moment, the grinning visage of something appears before it's gone again and you're gripped by a viscerally intense vision of your own demise. This might be your true death back home, an imagined death, or even a second death for those who seem to have been brought back from the brink of death in Gloucester. You have seen your own demise, though, do with that what you will. And count the steps on the way down… some of you may find an extra one at the end.

➥ The Lobster Clause

(cw: bug-adjacent imagery (lobsters); unnaturally large lobster; altered mental states; animal cruelty (though the animal in question is an Avatar))

Lobsters do not stop growing and do not die of old age. They die when they become too large to properly molt.

What first crossed an ADI researcher's desk as a joke from the internet has abruptly led to a very real, if maybe underwhelming, investigation and apocalypse prevention mission. Memes have circulated about a lobster god for a few years now without representing anything of actual concern, but near the end of March a TikTok video showing an upsettingly large crustacean went viral before suddenly being taken down and the associated account deleted.

After some sleuthing, ADI has been able to trace the video and other brief social media appearances of the self-proclaimed "Cult of the Leviathan" to the basement of a residence in nearby Ipswich. Municipal records show several calls from concerned neighbors in recent weeks, with officials suspecting that a gas leak or carbon monoxide buildup could be responsible for neighbors' strange, unsubstantiated claims of having felt the ground tremble and heard strange, booming sounds in the area. So far, though, crews sent out to investigate have been unable to find the source of the gas suspected to be causing hallucinations.

Following recon by investigator Rae Hargrave, who adamantly denies charges that she took on the mission to avoid her administrative duties at headquarters, the higher-ups have determined that while the Leviathan is, however incredibly, a viable threat, the situation doesn't call for a particularly elaborate solution. The phrase "smash and grab" is uttered multiple times during the mission briefing, before volunteers load up into a couple company vans for an apocalypse-averting day trip.

The plan really is simple. Smash down the front door, grab the giant lobster out of the basement. Everyone on the mission is under strict orders not to harm the residents of the house or anyone else they might encounter except in self defense, and to keep their faces hidden. They'll figure out how to kill the so-called Lobster Leviathan back at headquarters if someone doesn't manage to do it on the drive home.

Upon breaking and entering, investigators will be struck by an overwhelming feeling of how small and vulnerable they are, how soft and small and weak against a great presence in this house. In the basement they will find a gaggle of people splayed out on the floor around a stock tank, weeping hysterically. This, it seems, is the Cult of the Leviathan: a bunch of millennial jokesters now swept up in the suddenly very real worship of a suddenly very real Leviathan Lobster God. Approaching the tank, there is a sense of something huge, powerful, and malevolent waiting to pull you down into the depths and drown you there.

But this is why ADI sent a mob, a collective hammer rather than a singular scalpel. Be brave, and you can come near enough the tank to actually set eyes on the Lobster Leviathan. Be braver still in cooperation with those around you and you can haul the creature out into the light of day, and from thence into one of the company vans. In truth, the Lobster Leviathan is "only" six feet long–a terrible size for a lobster, but not an unmanageable size for a monster. Try to remember that every step of the way; forget for a moment and you, too, will feel the ground tremble and fall to the earth in terrified awe of this creature.

➥ The World Wide Web

(cw: Paranoia, warped perception of reality, body horror, implication of intended self-harm)

As useful as phones are in our lives, sometimes it’s easier or more preferable to settle in at a computer, or maybe you simply didn’t have a choice. Whether you’re within ADI or out in the town, computers are everywhere, they see all your secrets and hear all your fears. The evidence lies in an open search history, seemingly left on accident:

“How to rotate your eyes.”

How strange. The next one you notice isn’t much better.

“Working nose growth methods.”

People seem to be having an odd string of searches. Maybe. Or maybe there’s something else to blame. Maybe your neighbor isn’t your neighbor. Anyone who’s been here long enough in ADI can tell you there was a stint of time when people’s copies were running amok…those had to come from somewhere. Maybe they were grown. Or maybe these are messages, warning you of those around you. Those who aren’t quite right. When was the last time you really looked into your friend’s eyes? Maybe they aren’t quite turning right. Did their nose always have that little curve in it?

It’s the search you find next that really stars the gears turning: “How to get rid of excess body parts?”

Why…what a good question. Is that an odd bump that you hadn’t noticed before? Maybe you were wrong all along, maybe it isn’t about copies growing themselves (maybe….unless…) maybe it’s something in the water. Something slipped to you behind your back to grow extra parts and harvest them. Well, not if you get there first! How many fingers do you really need…?

➥ Mod Notes

• ARRIVAL (April 1-30): Two people will almost always arrive in the same general location together. Arrivals occur throughout the early month, not all on the same day or in the same place. Arrivals are not naturally fluent in English/other languages immediately upon arrival. Characters may attempt to evade capture, but they will eventually be snagged before they can leave the building (or the rubble that used to be part of the building). PC's already in-game are more than welcome to interact with and try to guide new PC's to get them oriented. Please refer to the Arrival page for details regarding the arrival and onboarding process, as well as information about the state of ADI Headquarters.
  
  
• 50 STEPS (April 1-30): Characters will be able to catch public buses to the Alden Pond Burial Ground. This is a wholly fictional place and town, so don't worry too much about finding it on a map. It's a good 15 miles out of Gloucester on the way to Manchester-by-the-Sea. Characters who are bludgeoned will not be able to find their assailants. Characters who see visions of their deaths will feel like they are living through their own demise. Anyone with them at the same time will witness that death, as well, as if an observer in the scene. For pairs, this means that they will experience both their own death and that of their partner's.
  
  
• THE LOBSTER CLAUSE (April 1-4): Research and briefing will take place April 1-3, with the mission itself taking place on April 4. Characters who do further digging into the Cult of the Leviathan can piece together that the "cult" appears to have formed around five years ago when two of the individuals now cowering in the basement caught an unusually large (i.e. three foot long) lobster and decided to keep it and see how big it could grow. Until recently the "cult" appears to have been nothing beyond a joke among friends. Reports of hallucinations in the neighborhood coincide with a sudden, rapid increase in the lobster's size in the first months of 2023. Admiring the lobster's size, admitting one's fear of the lobster, or otherwise engaging with the idea of the Lobster Leviathan as anything more significant than a big lobster will result in characters experiencing overwhelming feelings of being tiny and insignificant in the face of their new lobster god. Characters who attempt to fight or kill the lobster will find its shell impermeable; attempts to kill it will be unsuccessful until it is brought back to headquarters and boiled, which does kill it.
  
  
• WORLD WIDE WEB (April 1-20): Following these search results yourselves will lead to all kinds of conspiracy theory pages on par with mole-people propaganda, but something akin to implying plant people exist. Or rather, that people can grow like plants and the government doesn’t want you to know. The shrewd eye might notice that there is one website that keeps popping up, a place for recycling and environmentally friendly fertilizer solutions, sponsored to be one of the top results, it shows. Most disturbingly, however, it is not paid to show up on the search result borne of asking about disposing of body parts. Unfortunately, the plant where the soil is shipped from is not listed and the only contact is a P.O. Box in Idaho. Paranoia side-effects and perceived lumps can last hours or days, up until the 20th when all effects abruptly end. Any fingers or noses or anything else, extra or otherwise, lopped off over that time span will not grow back.
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Comments

d

[nevershutdown]

[Now. It's not easy to throw him for a loop but today? He is, as these modern people might say, thoroughly yeeted.]

You grew another finger?

[He's reading it once. He's checking it twice. He's gotta find out... well. If he actually got this right. Did he get this right?]

Just to clarify: You now have six fingers on your hand.

On one hand.

The same hand?

[onceplayed]

Yes. Yes to all of it!

It's so dreadful. You'll think it's hideous, you musn't see it.

Though admittedly it is nice, as hideous hands go. When I say hideous, I mean that in only the generalest of senses, not that it's actually hideous.

1/3

[nevershutdown]

2/3

[nevershutdown]

3/3

[nevershutdown]

Okay.

The way I see it, there's two things we must do now.

One, we'll get you to a doctor so that finger can be thoroughly examined.

Two, we'll have to buy you a new ring to make it feel welcome.

[onceplayed]

Oh, Lee, you really do know just what to say to me!

What kind of ring are we considering here?

You know I’ve always favored a purple gem…

[nevershutdown]

Then we'll get you a purple gem.

And sweetheart?

You could never be hideous to me.

[onceplayed]

Aww, Lee Coulter, that might be just the sweetest thing you’ve ever said to me.

I was worried…foolishly, even.

A large purple gem?

[nevershutdown]

[He's just gonna send a collection of heart emojis in response.]

Very large.

Doctor first, though.

[onceplayed]

[Gasp! Emojis! She will treasure them like they’re a bouquet of roses.

She sends about twice that in return.]

Do I have to? Oh, I suppose you’re right.

How large exactly are we considering here?

[nevershutdown]

[So. Many. Emojis. Oh no, look, there's one of a man and a woman holdings hands, what if he sends that one, too! Aren't they just exquisit! The ADI employee pointing them out to him deserves a raise.]

Why don't I pick you up and we can make our way over there together.

Well gee, I don't know, sweetheart. That surely depends on how much weight that new digit of yours can carry? If it just grew, we have to see how much it can take...

[onceplayed]

[Oh, they're lovely, Lee! She'll have to remember how to do that one. She sends a few flowers in return.]

I would like that, thank you, Lee.

Oh, well, I'm sure the doctor can tell us just that! And I'm sure it's very strong.